Learning From Me Pops

I just received my new business cards. I had the Shop address put on them. That should not surprise; the locals who actually come to see me need to know where its at while it doesn't really matter to the out of towners. And I learned from me Pops not to use me home address on such ephemera.

Me Pops was a smart man. But like so many of us he made his share of tactical errors, as he would himself confess. One was putting his home address, since it was also his business mailing address (mail never has come to the old barn, for whatever reason), on his first business cards. He found out quickly that that was a mistake.

Customers, and not the good and worthwhile ones, would hunt him down at horribly odd hours, 8:30 at night on a Saturday for example, to fix their cable or machine which had been broken for five days because they had an emergency job to handle. Dad, having a wife and bunch of rug rats to feed, clothe, and house, and also being concerned with someone else's emergency (who wants a backed up sewer at any time let alone late on a Saturday evening?) would generally open up and take care of business.

Yet that got old very fast. And, again, it was the less than stellar drain cleaners who demanded his time. Add this to the fact that a homeowner in dire straits would find another way out of their dilemma somehow, and he stopped such late night weekend nonsense. It would teach those special plumbers a valuable lesson too: get your drain snake fixed when it breaks, and not only when you would need it, potlikker.

Potlikkers

I had been holding 30 lengths of drain snake cable for a certain guy because he said he needed them. But when he arrived at the old barn he only took 16. The potlikker, I thought.

It's a mild insult which I picked up from me Pops. Whenever someone didn't do what he said he was going to do, Dad would later refer to him as 'the potlikker'. He might pluralize it to 'potlikkers' if it involved more than one person.

The only thing is, I can't find where the term is even a vague insult. My online search has come up with 'pot liquor', or how you can make liquor in a pot, or 'potlikker' which is apparently some kind of southern United States soup delicacy. Either way, I can't see where it's particularly degrading.

Yet I've added the term to my repertoire. Why not? It was good enough for Pops and doesn't appear to be actually hurtful. So put that in your pipes and smoke it, you potlikkers out there.